The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) describes the Freedom of Information Act 2000 as providing “public access to information held by public authorities.

It does this in two ways:

• public authorities are obliged to publish certain information about their activities; and
• members of the public are entitled to request information from public authorities.

The Act covers any recorded information that is held by a public authority, including government departments, in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and by UK-wide public authorities based in Scotland. 

The main principle behind freedom of information legislation is that people have a right to know about the activities of public authorities, unless there is a good reason for them not to. This is sometimes described as a presumption or assumption in favour of disclosure.”

It adds that:-

• “everybody has a right to access official information. Disclosure of information should be the default – in other words, information should be kept private only when there is a good reason and it is permitted by the Act;
• an applicant (requester) does not need to give you a reason for wanting the information. On the contrary, you must justify refusing them information“

A public authority has a legal duty to provide such information if it is held and has 20 working days to do so.  If the information cannot be provided within the stated time then the public authority has a legal duty to advise the person who made the request.

The public authority does not appear to have the right to ignore the request or state that it does not have the information if the requester is aware that it does collect such information, eg such as gathering information on the reasons people resign from their posts in a particular branch of the civil service.

On 15 November 2016 I made a Freedom of Information (FOI) Act request about my former employer.  I asked:

1) when interviews for manager posts are held, whether interviewing panels are informed of complaints about interviewees from civil service employees (this related to candidates from within this branch of the civil service, not candidates from outside);

2)  what had been the rate of staff turnover, both permanent and temporary employees, within the branch I worked for from 2010;

3)  how many complaints about workplace bullying had been received across the regional centres of this organisation since January 2010;

4)  how many times had confidentiality been breached since January 2010 which had caused safety problems for users of the service provided by the organisation.

Question 1) should be easy to answer as it relates to standard practice for interviews for manager posts.  Employees who resign are asked to complete a leaving survey.  This would capture the information I asked for in Questions 2) and 3).  Question 4) is of a sufficiently serious nature that I believe the information would have been recorded and so could have been supplied when I requested it.

Although I initially heard informally that the information was being gathered  because this was the law (so I know that the letter had been received), I later heard in a similarly informal way that the organisation did not want this information to “get out”. Despite the legal requirement to provide the information, nothing has been received and there has been no official acknowledgement of my request.

This, to me, seems to demonstrate the rather cavalier approach I found within this area of the civil service: it seems to believe it does not have to comply with the law and can act as it wishes to obscure or keep secret information it does not wish to be made public.

I am aware that I can make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

09 April 2017 Update

Yesterday I sent a complaint to the Information Commissioner.  It has to be signed for when received so should not be “lost in the post”.

I will post an update on the outcome of the complaint.

14 April 2017 Update

I received an acknowledgement of my complaint from the Information Commissioner’s office yesterday.  It is being allocated to a case officer who will contact me “in due course”.

24 May 2017 Update

Still waiting for a reply from the Information Commissioner’s office . . . !